Black Halo

ACT ONE

The Stew of Mankind

One

STEALING THE SUNRISE

Dawn had never been so quiet in the country.

Amid the sparse oases in the desert, noise had thrived where all other sound had died. Dawn came with songbirds, beds creaking as people roused themselves for labour, bread and water sloshed down as meagre breakfast. In the country, the sun came with life.

In the city, life ended with the sun.

Anacha stared from her balcony over Cier’Djaal as the sun rose over its rooftops and peeked through its towers to shine on the sand-covered streets below. The city, in response, seemed to draw tighter in on itself, folding its shadows like a blanket as it rolled over and told the sun to let it sleep for a few more moments.

No songbirds came to Anacha’s ears; merchants sold such songs in the market for prices she could not afford. No sounds of beds; all clients slept on cushions on the floor, that their late-night visitors might not wake them when leaving. No bread, no water; breakfast would be served when the clients were gone and the girls might rest up from the previous night.

A frown crossed her face as she observed the scaffolding and lazy bricks of a tower being raised right in front of her balcony. It would be done in one year, she had heard the workers say.

One year, she thought, and then the city steals the sun from me, too.

Her ears twitched with the sound of a razor on skin. She thought it odd, as she did every morning, that such a harsh, jagged noise should bring a smile to her lips. Just as she thought it odd that this client of hers should choose to linger long enough to shave every time he visited her.

She turned on her sitting cushion, observing the back of his head: round and bronzed, the same colour as the rest of his naked body. His face was calm in the mirror over her washbasin; wrinkles that would become deep, stress-born crevices in the afternoon now lay smooth. Eyes that would later squint against the sunset were wide and brilliantly blue in the glass as he carefully ran the razor along his froth-laden scalp.

‘I wager you have beautiful hair,’ she said from the balcony. He did not turn, so she cleared her throat and spoke up. ‘Long, thick locks of red that would run all the way down to your buttocks if you gave them but two days.’

He paused at that, the referred cheeks squeezing together self-consciously. She giggled, sprawled out on her cushion so that she looked at him upside-down, imagining the river of fire that would descend from his scalp.

‘I could swim in it,’ she sighed at her own mental image, ‘for hours and hours. It wouldn’t matter if the sun didn’t shine. Even if it reflected the light of just one candle, I could be blinded.’

She thought she caught a hint of a smile in the reflection. If it truly was such, however, he did not confirm it as he ran the razor over his scalp and flicked the lather into her basin.

‘My hair is black,’ he replied, ‘like any man’s from Cier’Djaal.’

She muttered something, rolled up onto her belly and propped her chin on her elbows. ‘So glad my poetry is not lost on heathen ears.’

‘“Heathen,” in the common vernacular, is used to refer to a man without faith in gods. Since I do not have such a thing, you are halfway right. Since gods do not exist, you are completely wrong.’ This time, he did smile at her in the mirror as he brought the razor to his head once more. ‘And I didn’t pay for the poetry.’

‘My gift to you, then,’ Anacha replied, making an elaborate bow as she rose to her feet.

‘Gifts are typically given with the expectation that they are to be returned.’ He let the statement hang in the air like an executioner’s axe as he scraped another patch of skin smooth.

‘Recompensed.’

‘What?’

‘If it was to be returned, you would just give me the same poem back. To recompense the gift means that you would give me one of your own.’

The man stopped, tapped the razor against his chin and hummed thoughtfully. Placing a hand against his mouth, he cleared his throat.

‘There once was an urchin from Allssaq—’

‘Stop,’ she interrupted, holding a hand up. ‘Sometimes, too, gifts can just be from one person to another without reprisal.’

‘Recompense.’

‘In this case, I believe my word fits better.’ She drew her robe about her body, staring at him in the mirror and frowning. ‘The sun is still sleeping, I am sure. You don’t have to go yet.’

‘That’s not your decision,’ the man said, ‘nor mine.’

‘It doesn’t strike you as worrisome that your decisions are not your own?’

Anacha immediately regretted the words, knowing that he could just as easily turn the question back upon her. She carefully avoided his stare, turning her gaze toward the door that she would never go beyond, the halls that led to the desert she would never see again.

To his credit, Bralston remained silent.

‘You can go in late, can’t you?’ she pressed, emboldened.

Quietly, she slipped behind him, slinking arms around his waist and pulling him close to her. She breathed deeply of his aroma, smelling the night on him. His scent, she had noticed, lingered a few hours behind him. When he came to her in the evening, he smelled of the markets and sand in the outside world. When he left her in the morning, he smelled of this place, her prison of silk and sunlight.

It was only when the moon rose that she smelled him and herself, their perfumes mingled as their bodies had been the night before. She smelled a concoction on him, a brew of moonlight and whispering sand on a breeze as rare as orchids. This morning, his scent lingered a little longer than usual and she inhaled with breath addicted.

‘Or skip it altogether,’ she continued, drawing him closer. ‘The Venarium can go a day without you.’

‘And they frequently do,’ he replied, his free hand sliding down to hers.

She felt the electricity dance upon his skin, begging for his lips to utter the words that would release it. It was almost with a whimper that her hand was forced from his waist as he returned to shaving.

‘Today was going to be one such day. The fact that it is not means that I cannot miss it.’ He shaved off another line of lather. ‘Meetings at this hour are not often called in the Venarium.’ He shaved off another. ‘Meetings of the Librarians at this hour are never called.’ He slid the last slick of lather from his scalp and flicked it into the basin. ‘If the Librarians are not seen—’

‘Magic collapses, laws go unenforced, blood in the streets, hounds with two heads, babies spewing fire.’ She sighed dramatically, collapsing onto her cushion and waving a hand above her head. ‘And so on.’

Bralston spared her a glance as she sprawled out, robe opening to expose the expanse of naked brown beneath. The incline of his eyebrows did not go unnoticed, though not nearly to the extent of his complete disregard as he walked to his clothes draped over a chair. That, too, did not cause her to stir so much as the sigh that emerged from him as he ran a hand over his trousers.

‘Are you aware of my duty, Anacha?’

She blinked, not entirely sure how to answer. Few people were truly aware of what the Venarium’s ‘duties’ consisted. If their activities were any indication, however, the wizardly order’s tasks tended to involve the violent arrest of all palm-readers, fortune-tellers, sleight-of-hand tricksters, and the burning, electrocution, freezing or smashing of said charlatans and their gains.

Of the duties of the Librarians, the Venarium’s secret within a secret, no one could even begin to guess, least of all her.

‘Let me rephrase,’ Bralston replied after her silence dragged on for too long. ‘Are you aware of my gift?’

He turned to her, crimson light suddenly leaking out of his gaze, and she stiffened. She had long ago learned to tremble before that gaze, as the charlatans and false practitioners did. A wizard’s stink eye tended to be worse than anyone else’s, if only by virtue of the fact that it was shortly followed by an imminent and messy demise.

‘That’s all it is: a gift,’ he continued, the light flickering like a flame. ‘And gifts require recompense. This’ – he tapped a thick finger to the corner of his eye – ‘is only given to us so long as we respect it and follows its laws. Now, I ask you, Anacha, when was the last time Cier’Djaal was a city of law?’

She made no reply for him; she knew none was needed. And as soon as he knew that she knew, the light faded. The man that looked at her now was no longer the one that had come to her the night before. His brown face was elegantly lined by wrinkles, his pursed lips reserved for words and chants, not poems.

Anacha stared at him as he dressed swiftly and meticulously, tucking tunic into trousers and draping long, red coat over tunic. He did not check in a mirror, the rehearsed garbing as ingrained into him as his gift, as he walked to the door to depart without a sound.

There was no protest as he left the coins on her wardrobe. She had long ago told him there was no need to pay anymore. She had long ago tried to return the coins to him when he left. She had shrieked at him, cursed him, begged him to take the coins and try to pretend that they were two lovers who had met under the moonlight and not a client and visitor who knew each other only in the confines of silk and perfume.

He left the coins and slipped out the door.

And she knew she had to be content to watch him go, this time, as all other times. She had to watch the man she knew the night before reduced to his indentation on her bed, his identity nothing more than a faint outline of sweat on sheets and shape on a cushion. The sheets would be washed, the cushion would be smoothed; Bralston the lover would die in a whisper of sheets.

Bralston the Librarian would do his duty, regardless.

‘Do you have to do that?’ the clerk asked.

Bralston allowed his gaze to linger on the small statuette for a moment. He always spared enough time for the bronze woman: her short-cropped, businesslike hair, her crook in one hand and sword in the other as she stood over a pack of cowering hounds. Just as he always spared the time to touch the corner of his eye in recognition as he passed the statue in the Venarium’s halls.

‘Do what?’ the Librarian replied, knowing full well the answer.

‘This is not a place of worship, you know,’ the clerk muttered, casting a sidelong scowl at his taller companion. ‘This is the Hall of the Venarium.’

‘And the Hall of the Venarium is a place of law,’ Bralston retorted, ‘and the law of Cier’Djaal states that all businesses must bear an icon of the Houndmistress, the Law-Bringer.’

‘That doesn’t mean you have to worship her as a god.’

‘A sign of respect is not worship.’

‘It borders dangerously close to idolatry,’ the clerk said, attempting to be as threatening as a squat man in ill-fitting robes could be. ‘And that certainly is.’

Technically, Bralston knew, it wasn’t so much against the law as it was simply psychotic in the eyes of the Venarium. What would be the point of worshipping an idol, after all? Idols were the hypocrisy of faith embodied, representing things so much more than mankind and contrarily hewn in the image of mankind. What was the point of it all?

Gods did not exist, in man’s image or no. Mankind existed. Mankind was the ultimate power in the world and the wizards were the ultimate power within mankind. These idols merely reinforced that fact.

Still, the Librarian lamented silently as he surveyed the long hall, one might credit idolatry with at least being more aesthetically pleasing.

The bronze statuette was so small as to be lost amidst the dun-coloured stone walls and floors, unadorned by rugs, tapestries or any window greater than a slit the length of a man’s hand. It served as the only thing to make one realise they were in a place of learning and law, as opposed to a cell.

Still, he mused, there was a certain appeal to hearing one’s footsteps echo through the halls. Perhaps that was the architectural proof to the wizards’ denial of gods. Here, within the Venarium itself, in the halls where no prayers could be heard over the reverberating thunder of feet, mankind was proven the ultimate power.

‘The Lector has been expecting you,’ the clerk muttered as he slid open the door. ‘For some time,’ he hastily spat out, dissatisfied with his previous statement. ‘Do be quick.’

Bralston offered him the customary nod, then slipped into the office as the door closed soundlessly behind him.

Lector Annis, as much a man of law as any member of the Venarium, respected the need for humble surroundings. Despite being the head of the Librarians, his office was a small square with a chair, a large bookshelf, and a desk behind which the man was seated, his narrow shoulders bathed by the sunlight trickling in from the slits lining his walls.

Bralston could spare only enough attention to offer his superior the customary bow before something drew his attention. The addition of three extra chairs in the office was unusual. The admittance of three people, clearly not wizards themselves, was unheard of.

‘Librarian Bralston,’ Annis spoke up, his voice deeper than his slender frame would suggest, ‘we are thrilled you could attend.’

‘My duty is upheld, Lector,’ the man replied, stepping farther into the room and eyeing the new company, two men and one visibly shaken woman, curiously. ‘Forgive me, but I was told this was to be a meeting of the Librarians.’

‘Apologies, my good man.’ One of the men rose from his chair quicker than the Lector could speak. ‘The deception, purely unintentional, was only wrought by the faulty use of the plural form. For, as you can see, this is indeed a meeting.’ His lips split open to reveal half a row of yellow teeth. ‘And you are indeed a Librarian.’

Cragsman.

The stench confirmed the man’s lineage long before the feigned eloquence and vast expanse of ruddy, tattoo-etched flesh did. Bralston’s gaze drifted past the walking ink stain before him to the companion still seated. His stern face and brown skin denoted him as Djaalman, though not nearly to the extent that the detestable scowl he cast toward Bralston did. The reason for the hostility became clear the moment the man began to finger the pendant of Zamanthras, the sea goddess, hanging around his neck.

‘Observant,’ the Lector replied, narrowing eyes as sharp as his tone upon the Cragsman. ‘However, Master Shunnuk, the clerk briefed you on the terms of address. Keep them in mind.’

‘Ah, but my enthusiasm bubbles over and stains the carpet of my most gracious host.’ The Cragsman placed his hands together and bowed low to the floor. ‘I offer a thousand apologies, sirs, as is the custom in your fair desert jewel of a city.’

Bralston frowned; the company of Anacha suddenly seemed a thousand times more pleasurable, the absence of her bed’s warmth leaving him chill despite the office’s stuffy confines.

‘As you can imagine, Librarian Bralston,’ Annis spoke up, reading his subordinate’s expression, ‘it was dire circumstance that drove these … gentlemen and their feminine companion to our door.’

The woman’s shudder was so pronounced that Bralston could feel her skin quake from where he stood. He cast an interested eye over his shoulder and frowned at the sight of something that had been beautiful long ago.

Her cheeks hung slack around her mouth, each one stained with a purple bruise where there should have been a vibrant glow. Her hair hung in limp, greasy strands over her downturned face. He caught only a glimpse of eyes that once were bright with something other than tears before she looked to her torn dress, tracing a finger down a vicious rent in the cloth.

‘Of course, of course,’ the Cragsman Shunnuk said. ‘Naturally, we came here with all the haste the meagre bodies our gods cursed us with could manage. This grand and harrowing tale the lass is about to tell you, I would be remiss if I did not forewarn, is not for the faint of heart. Grand wizards you might be, I have not yet known a man who could—’

‘If it is at all possible,’ Bralston interrupted, turning a sharp eye upon the Cragsman’s companion, ‘I would prefer to hear him tell it. Master …’

‘Massol,’ the Djaalman replied swiftly and without pretence. ‘And, if it is acceptable to you, I would prefer that you did not address me with such respect.’ His eyes narrowed, hand wrapping about the pendant. ‘I have no intention of returning the favour to the faithless.’

Bralston rolled his eyes. He, naturally, could not begrudge an unenlightened man his superstitions. After all, the only reason people called him faithless was the same reason they were stupid enough to believe in invisible sky-beings watching over them. Not being one to scold a dog for licking its own stones, Bralston merely inclined his head to the Djaalman.

‘Go on, then,’ he said.

‘We fished this woman out of the Buradan weeks ago,’ the sailor called Massol began without reluctance. ‘Found her bobbing in a ship made of blackwood.’

A shipwreck victim, Bralston mused, but quickly discarded that thought. No sensible man, surely, would seek the Venarium’s attention for such a triviality.

‘Blackwood ships do not sail that far south.’ Massol’s eyes narrowed, as though reading the Librarian’s thoughts. ‘She claimed to have drifted out from places farther west, near the islands of Teji and Komga.’

‘Those islands are uninhabited,’ Bralston muttered to himself.

‘And her tale only gets more deranged from there,’ Massol replied. ‘Stories of lizardmen, purple women …’ He waved a hand. ‘Madness.’

‘Not that the thought of seeking them out didn’t cross our minds,’ Sunnuk interrupted with a lewd grin. ‘Purple women? The reasonable gentleman, being of curious mind and healthy appetite, would be hard-pressed not to wonder if they are purple all over or—’

‘I believe it is time to hear from the actual witness.’ Lector Annis cut the man off, waving his hand. He shifted his seat, turning a scrutinising gaze upon the woman. ‘Repeat your story for the benefit of Librarian Bralston.’

Her sole reply was to bend her neck even lower, turning her face even more toward the floor. She folded over herself, arms sliding together, knees drawing up to her chest, as though she sought to continue collapsing inward until there was nothing left but an empty chair.

Bralston felt his frown grow into a vast trench across his face. He had seen these women who had sought to become nothing, seen them when they were mere girls. There were always new ones coming and going in Anacha’s place of employ, young women whose parents found no other way out of the debt they had incurred, girls snatched from the desert and clad in silk that made their skin itch. Often, he saw them being escorted to their new rooms to waiting clients, the lanterns low as to hide the tears on their faces.

Often, he had wondered if Anacha had cried them when she was so young. Always, he wondered if she still did.

And this woman had no tears left. Wherever she had come from bore the stains of her tears, bled out from her body. Violently, he concluded, if the bruises on her face were any indication. He slid down to one knee before her, as he might a puppy, and strained to look into her face, to convey to her that all would be well, that the places of law were havens safe from violence and from barbarism, that she would have all the time she needed to find her tears again.

Lector Annis did not share the same sentiment.

‘Please,’ he uttered, his voice carrying with an echo usually reserved for invocations. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers to suggest that he did not make requests.

‘I was …’ she squeaked at first through a voice that crawled timidly from her throat. ‘I was a merchant. A spice merchant from Muraska, coming to Cier’Djaal. We were passing through the Buradan two months ago.’

‘This is where she begins to get interesting,’ the Cragsman said, his grin growing.

‘Silence, please,’ Bralston snapped.

‘We were … we were attacked,’ she continued, her breath growing short. ‘Black boats swept over the sea, rowed by purple women clad in black armour. They boarded, drew swords, killed the men, killed everyone but me.’ Her stare was distant as her mind drifted back over the sea. ‘We were … I was taken with the cargo.

‘There was an island. I don’t remember where. There were scaly green men unloading the boats while the purple women whipped them. Those that fell dead and bloodied, they were … they were fed to …’

Her face began to twitch, the agony and fear straining to escape through a face that had hardened to them. Bralston saw her hands shake, fingers dig into her ripped skirt as though she sought to dig into herself and vanish from the narrowed gazes locked upon her.

She’s terrified, the Librarian thought, clearly. Do something. Postpone this inquisition. You’re sworn to uphold the law, not be a callous and cruel piece of—

‘The important part, please,’ Lector Annis muttered, his breath laced with impatient heat.

‘I was taken to the back of a cavern,’ the woman continued, visibly trying to harden herself to both the memory and the Lector. ‘There were two other women there. One was … tired. I couldn’t stop crying, but she never even looked up. We were both taken to a bed where a man came out, tall and purple, wearing a crown of thorns upon his head with red stones affixed to it. He laid me down … I … He did …’

Her eyes began to quiver, the pain finally too much to conceal. Despite the Lector’s deliberately loud and exasperated sigh, she chewed her lower lip until blood began to form behind her teeth. Having failed to fold in on herself, having failed to dig into herself, she began to tremble herself to pieces.

Bralston lowered himself, staring into her eyes as much as he could. He raised a hand, but thought better of it, not daring to touch such a fragile creature for fear she might break. Instead, he spoke softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

As he had spoken to Anacha, when she had trembled under his grasp, when she had shed tears into his lap.

‘Tell us only what we need,’ he said gently. ‘Leave the pain behind for now. We don’t need it. What we need’ – he leaned closer to her, his voice going lower – ‘is to stop this man.’

The woman looked up at him and he saw the tears. In other circumstances, he might have offered a smile, an embrace for her. For now, he returned her resolute nod with one of his own.

‘When the other woman wouldn’t scream anymore,’ the female continued, ‘when she wouldn’t cry, the man burned her.’ She winced. ‘Alive.’ She paused to wipe away tears. ‘I’d seen magic before, seen wizards use it. But they always were weak afterward, drained. This man …’

‘Was not,’ the Lector finished for her. ‘She witnessed several similar instances from this man and three others on the island. None of them so much as broke into a sweat when they used the gift.’

And this couldn’t have been sent in a letter? Discussed in private? Bralston felt his ire boil in his throat. We had to drag this poor thing here to relive this? He rose and opened his mouth to voice such concerns, but quickly clamped his mouth shut as the Lector turned a sharp, knowing glare upon him.

‘Your thoughts, Librarian.’

‘I’ve never heard of anything purple with two legs,’ Bralston contented himself with saying. ‘If it is a violation of the laws of magic, however, our duty is clear.’

‘Agreed,’ Annis replied, nodding stiffly. ‘Negating the physical cost of magic is a negation of the law, tantamount of the greatest heresy. You are to make your arrangements swiftly and report to our sister school in Port Destiny. You can find there—’

A ragged cough broke the silence. Lector and Librarian craned their gazes toward the grinning Cragsman, their ire etched into their frowns.

‘Pardon us for not living up to your expectations of noble and self-sacrificing men of honour, kind sirs,’ Shunnuk said, making a hasty attempt at a bow. ‘But a man must live by the laws his fellows put down, and we were told that gents of your particular calling offered no inconsequential sum for reports of all deeds blaspheming to your peculiar faith and—’

‘You want money,’ Bralston interrupted. ‘A bounty.’

‘I would not take money from faithless hands,’ the Djaalman said sternly. ‘But I will take it from his.’ He gestured to Shunnuk.

Bralston arched a brow, certain there was a deeper insult there. ‘A report of this nature carries the weight of ten gold coins, typical for information regarding illegal use of magic.’

‘A most generous sum,’ the Cragsman said, barely able to keep from hitting the floor with the eager fury of his bow. ‘Assuredly, we will spend it well with your honour in mind, the knowledge of our good deed only serving to enhance the lustre of the moment.’

‘Very well, then.’ The Lector hastily scribbled something out on a piece of parchment and handed it into a pair of twitching hands. ‘Present this to the clerk at the front.’

‘Most assuredly,’ Shunnuk replied as he spun on his heel to follow his companion to the door. ‘A pleasure, as always, to deal with the most generous caste of wizards.’

Bralston smiled twice: once for the removal of the stench and twice for the relief he expected to see upon the woman’s face when she learned of the justice waiting to be dealt. The fact that she trembled again caused him to frown until he noticed the clenched fists and murderous glare on her face. It was then that he noticed the particular hue of the purple discoloration on her face.

‘These bruises,’ he said loudly, ‘are fresh.’

‘Yes, well …’ The Cragsman’s voice became much softer suddenly. ‘The laws that man has set upon us and such.’ Seeing Bralston’s unconvinced glare, he simply sighed and opened the door. ‘Well, it’s not as though we could just give her a free ride, could we? After what she’d been through, our company must have been a mercy.’

‘Not that such a thing means anything to heathens,’ the Djaalman muttered.

Bralston didn’t have time to narrow his eyes before the woman cleared her throat loudly.

‘Do I get a request, as well?’ she asked.

The two sailors’ eyes went wide, mouths dropping open.

‘You did give us the actual report,’ the Librarian confirmed.

‘You …’ Shunnuk gasped as he took a step backward. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘What is it you desire?’ the Lector requested.

The woman narrowed her eyes, launched her scowl down an accusing finger.

‘Kill them.’

‘No! It’s not like that!’ The Cragsmen held up the parchment as though it were a shield. ‘Wait! Wait!’

‘Librarian Bralston …’ Lector Annis muttered.

‘As you wish.’

The next words that leapt from the Librarian’s mouth echoed off of the very air as he raised a hand and swiftly jerked it back. The door slammed, trapping the two men inside. The Cragsman barely had time to feel the warm moisture on his trousers before Bralston’s hand was up again. The tattooed man flew through the air, screaming as he hurtled towards Bralston. The Librarian uttered another word, bringing up his free palm that glowed a bright orange.

Shunnuk’s scream was drowned in the crackling roar of fire as a gout of crimson poured out of Bralston’s palm, sweeping over the Cragsman’s face and arms as the tattooed man helplessly flailed, trying desperately to put out a fire with no end.

After a moment of smoke-drenched carnage, the roar of fire died, and so did Shunnuk.

‘Back away!’ Massol shrieked, holding up his holy symbol as Bralston stalked toward him. ‘I am a man of honour! I am a man of faith! I didn’t touch the woman! Tell them!’ He turned a pair of desperate eyes upon the woman. ‘Tell them!’

If the woman said anything, Bralston did not hear it over the word of power he uttered. If she had any objection for the electric blue enveloping the finger that was levelled at the Djaalman, she did not voice it. Her face showed no horror as she watched without pleasure, heard Massol’s screams without pity, no tears left for the carnage she watched lit by an azure glow.

When it was done, when Bralston flicked the errant sparks from his finger and left the blackened corpse twitching violently against the door, the Librarian barely spared a nod to the woman. Instead, he looked up to the Lector, who regarded the smouldering bodies on his floor with the same distaste he might a wine stain on his carpet.

‘Tomorrow, then?’ Bralston asked.

‘At the dawn. It’s a long way to Port Destiny.’ The Lector raised a brow. ‘Do bring your hat, Librarian.’

With an incline of his bald head and a sweep of his coat, Bralston vanished out the door. The Lector’s eyes lazily drifted from the two corpses to the woman, who sat staring at them with an empty stare, her body as stiff as a board. It wasn’t until he noticed the pile of ash still clenched in the charred hand of the Cragsman that he finally sighed.

‘Waste of good paper …’